U.S. Reps. Ted Deutch and Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Sunday that Putnam should resign.But several South Florida Democrats who currently serve in the state Legislature in Tallahassee — state Sen. Perry Thurston and state Reps. Bobby DuBose and Al Jacquet — said they’re not sure, yet, if that’s the right course of action.

Calls for Putnam to resign have come from multiple Democrats since Friday, when the Tampa Bay Times reported that an Office of Inspector General report from June 2017 found that the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services didn’t access an FBI crime database between February 2016 and March 2017 because an employee was unable to log into the system.

The developments are a major political problem for Putnam, who is seeking the Republican nomination to run for governor.

“This is a massive amount of gross incompetence and negligence that isn’t your run-of-the-mill incompetence and negligence. This put guns into the hands of people who shouldn’t have had them. He, I think, has forfeited his right to continue to serve,” Wasserman Schultz said in a brief interview after she spoke at the Haitian-American Democratic Club’s annual luncheon in Sunrise.

Wasserman Schultz, who represents a Broward/Miami-Dade county district, said Putnam’s abilities as a leader are questionable. “What else would he screw up if he couldn’t complete the most basic of responsibilities that the commissioner of agriculture has to keep people safe and make sure concealed weapons permit applicants have a national background check?”

During his speech to the Democratic club, Deutch said the question isn’t simply Putnam’s fitness to serve in the state’s top job, governor. “For me, this is really simple,” said Deutch, who represents most of Broward and southeastern Palm Beach County. “He ought to resign his position … right now.”

Thurston and DuBose said they want to see a full investigation of what went wrong in Putnam’s office, and the fact that it was kept secret for more than a year.

Thurston, who represents much of Broward, said he wants to see an investigation before deciding if that’s the best course of action. “It’s disturbing, and I would like to get more information. That [resignation] may be in order, but I would have to have more information.”

DuBose, a Fort Lauderdale Democrat, said that would be appropriate “on the face of it,” but he wants to ensure everything that’s been reported is true.

Jacquet, a Delray Beach Democrat, said he didn’t have a view on whether Putnam should resign. “I’ll leave that for the candidates to go ahead and have a field day with it,” he said. “I don’t want to weigh in on that.”

“A lot of times when staff fails to do something or something goes wrong the buck stops with you, and you may end up getting some blame unfairly and sometimes you get blame that is well deserved,” Jacquet said.

“The headlines and the stories that say that there were no background checks for a year is inaccurate and misleading,” Putnam said following a campaign event in Sun City.

The former employee failed to follow through on 365 applications that were tagged by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement as having information that could make them ineligible for concealed-weapons licenses. Putnam said 291 of those licenses were later revoked. None of the recipients of the wrongly issued licenses would have been able to purchase a gun, Putnam maintained.

Around the same time as Putnam went on the defense, he was blasted by his opponent for the Republican nomination for governor, Congressman Ron DeSantis.

“Adam has spent years campaigning for governor, basically, in this position and the report was very concerning because it seemed like he wasn't minding the store when we needed him to be there,” DeSantis told reporters after a Pensacola event.

But Putnam, a veteran politician who made national headlines last year when he referred to himself as a “proud NRA sellout,” said he asked for the inspector general investigation and that his office has subsequently added “new safeguards to prevent this from happening in the future.

“This is a serious issue. Make no mistake about it. But it has been misleadingly reported that 350,000 people did not have background checks. That could not be more wrong,” Putnam said.